Ionia’s great port city
Miletus
Miletus was a city primarily of nature, but
also of writers, sculptors, town planners, historians and sages.
Civilization means water... An
essential, if perhaps not often restated, definition. So many places on
earth bear witness to it, and Anatolia is one of them. The creators of
the great civilizations have always been those who founded cities next
to rivers, lakes and seas. And even if we overlook their temples rising
to the sky, their majestic theatres, and their monumental avenues and
sculptures, their sages still haunt us even today...
City of sages
Some 2100 years ago today, Strabo, writer of the ‘Geography’, enumerates
the sages of Miletus: “Among them were also Thales, one of the seven
sages of the world, who originated mathematics and natural philosophy
among the Greeks, and his student, Anaximandros, and Hecataios of the ‘Historia’,
and Aiskhines, an orator who lived in my own time and was exiled for
speaking out too freely in the presence of Pompey the Great.”
Thales, who is also mentioned in the book, ‘In the waters of the Greater
Meander: Priene, Miletus, Didyma’, is a learned man who predicted the
solar eclipse of 5 May 585 B.C. exactly one year in advance. This
scientific calculation later influenced Arabs, Iranians and Turks in the
Islamic world. Meanwhile, its effects in Europe were observed in the
Renaissance and laid the foundation for science in the 19th century.
Hippodamos of Miletus must also be added to the list. This great town
planner implemented his grid system of intersecting streets not only in
Miletus and Priene but also in Greece and Italy. The system was later
repeated in Alexandria, Macedonia and on the island of Rhodes. Its
purpose: to take continuous advantage of light and breezes. To prevent
cramped houses that obstruct each other’s sun and wind. Nor did it apply
only to houses and streets; even today in the dog-days of August the
corridors and enclosed staircases of Miletus’ theatre provide relief
from nature’s sweltering heat.
Traces of Ionian Art
You may be distracted by details as you tour Miletus and its environs
with the heart of a traveller: a marble figure, spirals, grooved columns
with Ionian capitals, statues of Eros, lion’s heads, stylized flowers
and an endless plain... Perhaps the story of Pericles’ beloved Aspasia,
a girl from Miletus, will transport you to the clouds. Aspasia was a
favorite with the learned men. Socrates, Euripides and Anaxagoras were
regular guests at the house of this girl, whose knowledge complemented
her beauty. If necessary, she could even give orders in the heat of
battle. But no small number of people branded her a ‘prostitute’. Such
details are unimportant; but Miletus is the port city of a great sea, a
land where a civilization was created that would influence societies
even thousands of years later. To loll around empty-headed in the shadow
of its 15,000-person theatre would perhaps for this reason not become an
Ionian! And for similar reasons we need to understand the mystery behind
the theatre, the Stoa along the ceremonial way, the Harbour Monument,
the Agora, the Gymnasium,
the Temple of Serapis, the Stadium and the public baths, adorned with
statues. This mystery is none other than Ionian thought and art, which
was created on the lands of Anatolia and in the waters of the Greater
Meander, today’s Söke Plain. The Greater Meander River, which has its
origin deep in Anatolia on the slopes of Mt Murat near the city of Usak
and flows 584 kilometres on its great journey to the Aegean’s salt
waters, is at the same time the source of a great legend. The ‘river
god’ Maeandros of ancient lore was one of the offspring of Oceanus and
Tethys. Every piece of land through which his river flowed became a
source of plenty. And Söke Plain today is an important area of cotton
production. Owing to its sinuous flow, ‘Maeandros’ is now a symbol in
art as well. An indispensable model for artists who give shape to
marble, it took the name Meander and had an impact on our own age as
well.
The River God on Trial
Every fact and every legend here is like a dream. If it were not, would
the people of Miletus have taken their river god Maeandros to court?
Yes, according to legend, the river god they worshipped took the mud
that followed him, the soil that he nourished in his breast on his great
journey through the Anatolian lands, and turned it into silt which he
deposited in the salt water, transforming the Bay of Latmos (today’s
Bafa) into a lake and the surrounding area, the island of Lale where a
great naval battle with the Persians was fought in 494 B.C., into a tiny
chunk of the mainland. The people of Miletus, whose lands thus became a
field of silt, appealed to the temple to take the god to court. And they
won their case! How?
Well, man is a strange beast... First he creates a god. He builds
temples to his god. He makes donations—gold, silver, whatever he has...
He takes refuge in its priests. And when he is angry, he goes to court.
What could the priests do? In order not to lose the people’s donations,
they sued the gods and reimbursed those whose fields had been destroyed.
And who would collect the donations after that? What one hand giveth the
other taketh away...
Nature's City
No city devoted to art and culture is an ordinary city.But Miletus,
capital of the ‘Ionian League’, has a special place, like many cities of
Anatolia. All of them are cities of nature. Cities of writers,
sculptors, town planners, historians and sages... founders of political
solidarity, of the league known as ‘Panionia’. Cities that symbolize the
Ionian way of thinking to which Panionia gave rise. A maritime people
who established colonies not only on the Aegean and the Mediterranean
but on the Marmara and the Black Sea as well. Its story is long, but for
us Miletus is not just a city of temples and monuments and those who
take refuge in their shade, but a city that has left great marks in
science and in art. If it were not, would the Anatolian principality of
the Menteseogullari have erected the Mosque of Ilyas Bey, who had great
respect for nature and art, in plain view of the ancient theatre? To us,
this monument is no different from the Ionic Stoa... shades of Ionian
art thousands of years later... Best of all however is to tour Miletus
in spring. To follow the trail of the sunflowers. To ponder the Ionians
as we survey the poppies that cover the plain.
Text: Gürol Sözen,
Photo: Ali Konyal, Sky Life
Timeline of Miletus
Ancient Greek city in
caria, southwest
Anatolia. Home of Thales, the "father of philosophy," and his followers
Anaximander and Anaximenes, Miletus was the intellectual and commercial center
of the Greek world in the century before Athens rose to prominence. Because of
its important maritime location and its proximity to the famous sanctuary of
Apollo at Didyma, Miletus prospered as a trading center. During the 8th and 7th
centuries BCE, Miletus established over 90 colonies including Naucratis in Egypt
and sinop, Cherson, and Tanais on the Black Sea.
The city was the most important of the 12 cities in the Pan-Ionian League. It
held a significant position until the Common Era, but by Byzantine times it had
dwindled to insignificance owing to the harbour silting up, and the place had
become entirely abandoned by the end of the 6th century - even today the full
extent of the classical city is unknown.
- Settled towards end of the 2nd millenium BCE by Carians.
- a Carian dynasty
- Anax
- Asterius
- a Cretan dynasty
- Miletus................................................c. 1400
- Ionian Kings and Tyrants
- Neleus (son of King Kodros of Athens)..................mid 1000's
- According to legend Neleus and his followers captured
Miletus and put all the men of the town to the sword, taking the women as
their wives.
- Aepytus
- ??
- Leodamas
- ??
- Thrasybulus........................................fl. c. 610
- To
Persia........................................530's-480
- Histaeus........................fl. c. late
500's-490's with...
- Aristagoras............................fl. c.
500-495
- Although Miletus seems to have had special
privileges under Persian rule, it took an active part in the Ionian revolt
of 500-494 B.C. Following the Greek defeat at the naval battle of Lade in
494 B.C., the Persians destroyed Miletus and killed or enslaved all the
inhabitants. At the same time the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma was also
plundered and destroyed.
- To the Delian
League...............................480-411
- Independent........................................411-386
- To Persia..........................................386-334
- To Macedon.........................................334-305
- To the Kingdom of Antigonos........................305-295
- Timarchus (as
tyrant)..............................fl. c. 250
- To the Seleucid Empire..........................c.
225-189
- To
Pergamum........................................189-133 and...
- To the Roman
Republic..............................133-27
- To the Roman Empire.............................27 BCE-395 CE
- To the Byzantines thereafter...
TransAnatolie Tour
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